Boris Yeltsin — "The main problem with being president is the constant sense that you are inside …"
The main problem with being president is the constant sense that you are inside a glass bowl for everyone to see, or in a kind of barometric chamber with an artificial atmosphere where you must stay all the time.
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First president of post-Soviet Russia (1991-1999), who climbed atop a tank to defy the August 1991 coup and oversaw the chaotic privatization of the 1990s.
Closely associated with
Mikhail Gorbachev (his predecessor and rival reformer).
For an intellectual contrast, see
Gennady Zyuganov, Russian Communist Party leader — Zyuganov came within 3 percentage points of beating the ailing Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential runoff — the closest free election Russia has had, and arguably the moment that decided whether Russia would reverse to communism or continue down the path that led to Putin.